Exciting News from the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification with Scott Dunnell

Scott Dunnell Director of Marketing and Strategic Alliances at CRCC at 847-944-1304 or email at SDunnell@CRCCertification.com

Transcribed by Latrice Stewart

Rick: On today’s episode of the VR Workforce Studio Podcast, a special feature presentation from our vocational rehabilitation briefing room, as we welcome Scott Dunnell from the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification. Scott is here to talk with us about some of the exciting new developments at CRCC. Scott Dunnell is the Director of Marketing and Strategic Alliances. In addition to overseeing CRCC’s strategic marketing plan, Scott is responsible for cultivating relationships, partnerships, and alliances among key individuals and organizations to further appreciation and value of the CRC certification. Scott’s extensive experience includes strategic marketing and business development for educational institutions, health care organizations, associations and other not for profit organizations. Publications to his credit include his book “Brand Compassing”, navigating toward greater equity and brand value as well as numerous awards for excellence in branding and graphic design. Scott it’s a pleasure to have you here on the VR Workforce Studio Podcast.

Scott: Thank you for having me and hello to everybody out there.

Rick: Scott, what’s the history and the main focus of CRCC?

Scott: Well as many of your listeners probably know, CRCC has been around for a long time it’s the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification. It was founded in 1974 and it is in fact the world’s largest rehabilitation counseling organization and it’s dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities. And we do this by certifying rehabilitation counselors at the master’s level and this is setting the standard for competent delivery of quality rehabilitation counseling services through the exam that we give these people.

Rick: Scott it seems to me our world and our profession and the way we communicate is changing so rapidly and has changed over the last few years. How is CRCC moving into the future to meet the needs of counselors and the rehabilitation community?

Scott: I think when you look at 2012-2013, I think that CRCC realized that they had to make some changes beyond just the one product that they were offering and so they brought me in in 2013 to develop the marketing program. At the same time, we also worked on products and services and we did a lot of research, not only with our CRC’s, but also the rehabilitation counselors in general to try to figure out what we needed to do to expand our products and services in order to increase awareness of it and also the demand for the certification. And what that has done in fact, is all of that research has led to products and services which now include what we call the CRCC community and that is the first online community built exclusively to serve all rehabilitation counseling professionals. It has three components to it and the first one is our online job board which we call CRCC Aspire and that helps connect employers who hire rehabilitation counseling professionals to our CRC’s and also our CRC applicants. Those people who are currently in the process of achieving certification so they have that exclusivity to put their resumes out there online on that job board and employers are able to go in and really find the best of the best. The second part is the online professional networking platform and that is what we call CRCC Engage. And this was actually created to empower our subscribers all of our not just CRC’s but rehabilitation counselors in general, to create meaningful, engaging dialog amongst themselves and what we’ve seen just in the first year. We have over 3,000 participants currently on CRCC Engage they’ve created over 1,000 discussion threads they’ve just been actively involved in bringing more people into discussion of various topics on rehabilitation counseling and we’re seeing a lot of positives for that and seeing it kind of mushroom and grow. And then the third part of this which is what I really wanted to talk a little bit about today is CRCC University which is an online learning community. It’s interactive it’s dynamic it’s an engaging format and it is going to, we think, be a game changer for continuing education for rehabilitation counseling.

Rick: So Scott what are some of the highlights we can look forward to?

Scott: You know what’s exciting for us is we’re having the opportunity to really create content for continuing education that delivers real world application and I think this is what’s going to set us apart in terms of the quality of what we’re offering. Not only is it affordable but also high quality in terms of rehabilitation counselors being able to take what they learn and apply it immediately to their work setting and that’s the big game changer right there. But we are going to be offering a whole array of courses when we lead this off in the next couple of weeks and that’s going to cover everything from ethics, to job placement, to multicultural counseling, transition services, and we’re going to be adding courses on and on as we go along so there’ll probably be about ten courses that’ll be offered when we launch. The great part is that we have created a promotional plan which allows for anyone to come into the university and take a course for free, a one hour course they take it for free. There’s no risk, there’s no obligation to buy anything, you get one hour of CE credit and then if you really like what you’re seeing from CRCC University in terms of the quality and the content, you can sign up for an introductory subscription for one year. We give you a twenty percent discount on that you also get two free CE credits and in addition to that that allows you to save forty percent on all of your actual course purchases. So it kind of pays for itself within two or three courses when you kind of look at it and do the math, but we are excited about being able to offer something that we feel is affordable, it’s quality and it’s also very very convenient, particularly for CRC’s because they get to upload all of their continuing education directly to their account which means there’s no more paperwork involved and usually if you’re trying to do this and you’re trying to get you’re renewal done for certification, you’re running around trying to find your paperwork or whatever now you don’t have to do that anymore.

Rick: Tell us where we can reach you Scott.

Scott: Yea you can reach out to myself Scott Dunnell Director of Marketing and Strategic Alliances at CRCC at 847-944-1304 and you can contact me through my e-mail at SDunnell@CRCCertification.com

Rick: Thanks Scott we wish you and the team at CRCC the very best and appreciate you being on today’s show.

Scott: Alright listen thanks Rick I really appreciate it.

This is the VR workforce studio, inspiration, education and affirmation “AT WORK”. The workforce and disability employment podcast from the Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation Center, a Division of the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services. The VR Workforce Studio is published by our Foundation at wwrcf.org and is available in iTunes and at vrworkforcestudio.com.

Recent Episodes

Categories

About the Site

Our website and podcast focuses on Individuals with Disabilities and stories of employment including training and education, vocational rehabilitation and celebrates the champions of employment who hire people with disabilities as well as vocational rehabilitation professionals and the work they do to create hope and a path forward to employment for people with disabilities so they can work and lead better lives.